Monday, January 13, 2014

Trailer. Check.

So, I've been watching the Clinton Anderson Groundwork series and although I recognized a lot of what we've been working on, they're really helping to kind of help me figure out the... thought process behind the teachings and refine my methods. And we saw some excellent results today!

We worked on flexing her head and neck, disengaging her hindquarters, and backing. Then we worked on one of the missing blocks Michelle hadn't worked with us on- I think she thought Sherwood knew it, since she's generally pretty good about her front feet. I found out she's not. Not really. So... we worked on that.

 The we desensitized her to the rope because I noticed she was getting pretty jumpy around it.

I set up a couple obstacles, one of which was a silver tarp held down on one side but left to flap around the other 3 sides. She's never had an issue with tarps, so I upped the ante by letting it flap around her legs in the wind. I'm pretty sure she laughed at me as she walked and trotted over it.

The next was a small gymnastics set along the fence- a 12" cross rail with a pole 9 feet beyond it, or vice versa. We started just going over the pole, yielding and going the opposite direction, then went over the jump, then over both. Back and forth 3 times each side. Next time, I'm upping that damn fence. I'm pretty sure she wasn't done chuckling from the tarp.

Then the tire, just walk over it once as the last refresher of the day. This one I got her attention with. Oy. In between each of these, we stepped away and did some lunging.

THEN we walked over to the trailer and point and shot on (first time ever!!), she turned around all on her own, and stood looking out. Then we played around the in the trailer- turning around, yielding hinds and fores, backing, and going forward, messing around with the rope, and giving feet. We even got one panicked back off, which promptly landed her in some lunging and yielding, and a rest back on the trailer. Overall, she's doing pretty fricking awesome. We called it a day at that.

It was so cute watching her yawn over and over on the crossties. Stress relief, much?

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